Ryan St. Germain

You can ask me questions

We’d planned to go to dinner at our favorite restaurant after she finished her last day of work. We were saying goodbye to all the places that we loved before the inevitable separation; a tour of places we’d been happy once. I waited at home for her because she was going to have a goodbye drink with friends after work and would come home to change. I’d gotten food poisoning the night before and I laid down and waited for her as the symptoms got worse. I waited for her text saying she was on her way home, planning to ask her to bring me home something from the pharmacy so I could suck it up and go to dinner. Four hours later I was in even worse condition and I headed to the store myself, not having heard from her. I walked there in a state of delirium, trying to hold myself together as I struggled with illness and the fact that I’d known all along she would stand me up.

It was a half mile there and a half mile home. I thought maybe she’d be there when I got back and that perhaps somehow I’d just been a little impatient. I really wanted that to be the case. She wasn’t there though and when she finally walked in the door it was too late; for dinner, for apologies, for excuses and ultimately it was too late for us. She was intoxicated and belligerent and I realized that she would never be the sort of person I thought I could rely on or ask for help because she is barely capable of taking care of herself, let alone anyone else. Up until then I’d been harboring some hope that perhaps we’d find a way to make it work in the eleventh hour, but I knew that nights like that would be something I’d have to accept if we stayed together. I was angry and I told her she should be embarrassed of herself, but what I really meant was that I was embarrassed of her and I was embarrassed of myself for being in a relationship that felt so frivolous, so meaningless to the person I’d been in it with.

I wanted to find a hotel and not come back until she was gone, but I also wanted to be the better person. I wanted to make the most of the time but it was hard to doing so without feeling weak and I wasn’t sure if I was doing it for her, for myself or for the hope that it would change things between us and take them back to a place where we loved each other. I caved and asked her the next day to have the dinner she’d stood me up for the night before; it felt like the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do at the same time. Being cold to someone doesn’t bring me any lasting satisfaction, particularly when I know that I’m going to say goodbye to them and probably won’t ever lay eyes on them again.

Excerpt from “All said and Done” (via RomanticPornographer.com)